Nathaniel Winthrop
- Ipswich -x- Ghosts -x- Ezra Winthrop
Sobriquet: Nate - but only to his beloved younger brother - Ezra.
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History: Nathaniel was born at the close of the American Civil War in the autumn of 1865. His mother, Elisabeth Abigayle Winthrop was the surviving heir of the Winthrop family fortune. The war between the states shattered the wealthy Winthrop family into northern and southern branches, with the Winthrops of Massachusetts surviving into the twentieth century. Nathaniel like most first born sons was the chosen heir to the family fortune and was educated at the prestigious Harvard University at Cambridge. He took up the family shipping business in 1885.
After thirty-five years as the head of Winthrop Shipping Enterprises, Nathaniel retired to join his younger brother Ezra in Egypt as the financial factor in their archaeological investigations in the Valley of the Kings. And it was largely due to his financial and diplomatic skill that the brothers were able to illicitly excavate in the Valley of the Kings in 1921.
Their primary competitor and the legitimate authority allowed to dig in the Valley of the Kings, Howard Carter was struggling to keep the prestigious patronage of Lord Carnarvon after several years of digging in the valley without any significant finds. Nathaniel paid a fortune in bribes to maintain their dig sites in the valley and over time he became just as much a fanatic as his younger brother Ezra in the pursuit of an untouched Pharaonic tomb. In early 1922, the two brothers discovered a small tomb only a dozen feet from where Howard Carter would unearth the resting place of King Tut.
As the brothers were months ahead of Carter, they were able to excavate the tomb without the interference of the Egyptian Antiquities Service and kept their find to themselves. The tomb's cover-stone bore no inscription, which both brothers found ominous, but once the stone was removed and the door unsealed they forgot their concerns as childish superstition. Had Nathaniel listened to his own inner voice of reason, his life might well have turned out differently. But, like his brother Ezra, the fever of archaeology had thoroughly infected him.
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